How I generated 1000 random faces for my game in Python

In the development of my game there came a point where I realized I will need a conversation system with face avatars.

Therefore I’ve decided to create a face generator based on a famous game Papers, Please.

Data gathering

I’ve downloaded about 50 portraits from pixabay.com (all the images are CC licensed with no attribution required).

Next I cut the background of each image in Photoshop (just a polygon select tool and the Delete key). I plan to use the cutout effect later to hide any imperfections.

Images with removed background

Face segmentation

I am using layers for face segmentation. I simply brush paint the “nose and mouth” and then the “eyes and eyebrows” parts and then create a new PS layer for it. I do that by selecting the visible pixels (Ctrl+layer thumbnail click) and making a new layer from the selected. Any hair, glasses or other face cover goes into a layer named “hair_overlap”. I mark the segments for all of the 50 images.

Layer workflow

I also must prepare the faces for the newly pasted features — I use the Clone Stamp Tool, clone the skin and smudge all the facial features (new layer smudged).

Feature extraction

Some portrait photos I’ve downloaded are not suitable for using it as a whole, so I extract just the features I can use for the generator (i.e. only nose and lips).

I am going to extract the features with psd_tools and Pillow Python libraries (install those with pip install psd-tools Pillow or let your IDE take care of it).

This code snippet should list all the layers and their bounding boxes..

Next I want to export all the layers into individual image files. I also create a folder for each layer name (the code snippet below produces…